Anatomy - 1.1Welcome to class 3! Now were on to the good stuff...
How many times have you tried to draw a person, and finally given up in frustration saying ?I can?t get this right?? Be patient with yourself and don?t give up! Mastering figure drawing may take several years; however, with practice, your skills gradually improve and your drawings of people begin to look better and better.
In this lesson you can either use your tablet + drawing software, or a Pencil/pen + paper. I suggest both. Fill your personal sketchbooks!
Mature artists use gesture sketching routinely.
A gesture sketch can be a beautiful artwork in its own right, but it's also the first raw marks under a highly finished painting.
Gesture sketching can be used as a warm-up and refinement exercise, just like practicing scales for music, or floor and barre work for dance.
Gesture sketching is used for active thinking -- Most artists plan their artworks in a gesture sketching style.
Gesture sketching is essential, not just because it is taught as a first step in drawing, but because it is central to the art making process.The Start:Before you make a line you must have a clear conception of what you want to draw. In your mind it is necessary to have an idea of what the figure to be drawn is doing. Study the model from different angles. Sense the nature and condition of the action, or inaction. This conception is the real beginning of your drawing.
Details:Dont worry about details in this lesson. At the moment we don't care how hands/feet/face look. Were just trying to get the proportions/measurements/balance correct in these sketches.
Balance:This will be a big part in Class 4, but you can see if your figure has balance or not! keep an eye out for this, because some sketches can look very awkward and very unbalanced as if they were about to fall over.
Less is more:Sometimes in sketches, less is really more! try having some line variety, leaving some lines open, and also not completely outlining your piece! If you leave a little opening, this is called " closure " and will actually make your piece look more 3 dimensional and alive. The outline of a figure may be so drawn that it gives no sense of the manifold smaller forms of which it is composed. Again the outline of a figure may be so drawn that the sense of the figure's depth, of the wedging, interlocking and passing of smaller forms within the larger masses conveys to the mind and impression of
volume and solidity.Movement:As movement occurs, and the body instinctively assumes a position suited to the taking of some action, the muscles, by contraction, produce the twisting and bending of the masses. In so doing the muscles themselves expand, shorten and bulge, making smaller wedges or varied forms connecting the larger and more solid masses.
